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Donegal County Council has voted overwhelmingly to oppose the legalisation of abortion. It is great to hear such good news from Ireland. Here is the report from the Donegal Daily:
A motion has been passed opposing any form of legislation on abortion today by Donegal County Council.
The majority of county councillors backed the motion which was brought forward by Cllr Renagh Donaghey from Buncrana.
Seventeen councillors backed the motion, six abstained and one voted against.
The move has been welcomed by Cathal Quinn, spokesperson for Donegal For Life.Thought and Action observes that "among the Councillors who voted in favour were members of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and Independents. Sinn Fein abstained."

Pat Buckley of the European Life Network also points out that "Ireland without abortion has the lowest level of maternal mortality making it the safest place in the world for mothers to give birth."

Christopher Gillibrand at Catholic Church Conservation comments on the campaign by Titanic magazine in Germany against Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy See obtained an injunction against the magazine in July but it continues to publish insulting pictures of the Holy Father.

Cathcon points out that the magazine should remember the history of Nazis denigrating the Church and the Pope, illustrating the point by the above cartoon. The texts in the cartoon translate as follows:
The French trip of the Cardinals.Poisoned Cooking of the People's FrontAnathema liesHumanite - the Communist newspaper - Christian persecution in GermanyShe is really not beautiful - but she can cook.
The cartoon also offers one more demonstration to disprove the calumnies against Pope Pius XII which smear him as a friend of the Nazis and an enemy of the Jews. Evidently the Nazis didn't think so at the time.

My good friend Fr Guy Nicholls sends me news of a conference of the Blessed John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music (which I wrote about last July) to be held next month at the Birmingham Oratory. Mgr Wadsworth, Executive Director of ICEL and Mgr Burnham of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are among the speakers, together with other first class contributors. I think that Church musicians will enjoy this. Here are the details:

JHNILM Conference September 21st /22nd 2012 at the Oratory, Birmingham

In September, the Blessed John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music celebrates its first birthday, and the second anniversary of the visit to the Oratory by Pope Benedict on the occasion of the beatification of Blessed Cardinal Newman, founder of the Oratory and Patron of the Institute.

To mark the occasion the JHNILM is holding a two day conference at the Oratory, on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd September.

Faith Summer Session 2011
This afternoon I am off to join the Faith Summer Session with about 200 others including a good number of young priests and seminarians as well as students from all over Britain. The theme this year is "The Year of Faith: Reasons for Believing." Please say a prayer for fine weather as the sports and social activities are a healthy complement to the liturgical, spiritual and theological provision.

The latest Faith Magazine is now online at the Faith Website. As ever, you can read the content free of charge on the internet or subscribe if you would like a nice glossy printed copy of the magazine.

When I am next in America I want to go and have a chicken sandwich at Chick-Fil-A. I had never heard of Chick-Fil-A until the storm recently broke out in America because the CEO, Truett Cathy dared to say ( in an interview with a Christian magazine) that he believes in the biblical definition of the family unit. It is also part of the company's ethos that they refuse to open on Sundays, run debt free, and contribute a percentage of their profits back to the community.

City Mayors are refusing to let Chick-Fil-A open new outlets. Rosanne Barr went further, saying anyone who eats at Chick-Fil-A deserves to get cancer. Gay groups are asking people to stay away from Chick-Fil-A but as the picture above shows, the boycott doesn't seem to be going so well.
I agree with Matthew Archbold's analysis of this attack:
[...] the left's reaction to the fast food joint has little to do with gay rights and everything to do with silencing dissent. This reaction along with the media…

Against my better judgement I switched on the BBC iPlayer yesterday to look at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. I found it difficult to pause it and get on with some work. Eventually I watched the whole lot, excluding the march past from about Azerbaijan to Venezuela.

All of the things I was going to say about it have already become clichés in the coverage of the mainstream media (crazy, bizarre, mental, bonkers, very British etc.) The sketch with James Bond and the Queen was priceless. Having checked today, I am impressed that Her Majesty herself delivered the line "Good evening Mr Bond": to join in with such an irreverent send-up is, I would suggest, a mark of humility.

The show contained some stunning redundancy. Sir Simon Rattle, principal conductor of arguably the best orchestra in the world, the Berlin Philharmonic, had the London Symphony Orchestra rendering the Chariots of Fire theme - but all as a backdrop to a Mr Bean sketch.

Mr Blair says that he accepts the doctrine of the Catholic Church but that he is "not a doctrinal ideologue." An ideology is a set of ideas that constitute one's beliefs, moral and philosophical, and doctrines are statements of the beliefs to which one adheres. As any first year student of philosophy can readily grasp, it is simply fatuous to deny that we have certain beliefs and ideals that shape the way that we think and act concerning particular problems both theoretical and practical.

When a man denies that he has an ideology or that he is a dogmatist, it simply means that he rules out the validity of the doctrines and ideals of anyone except himself. Everybody else has beliefs which are dogmatic o…

It is nearly four years since I posted about Our Lady of Good Success and the apparitions to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (1563-1635) at her convent in Quito, Ecuador. I know that some of you may be nervous of new apparitions so let me assure you that this is a very long established devotion which was approved by the local bishop in the 17th century.

William Oddie has brought out the significance of the revelations for our own time in an article for the Catholic Herald website. Our Lady spoke of moral decadence that would happen after the middle of the 20th century and said that her message would not become generally known until the 20th century.

Here is a link to a good Q&A on the apparitions by Maria Horvat. The story of Mother Mariana is mindblowing as is the accuracy of the revelations.

It is always strange to me when people ask my permission to attend Mass. This sometimes happens when non-Catholics are impressed by a Requiem Mass, a Baptism or a Wedding (we should always remember that these are occasions of evangelisation.) It also happens when Catholics wonder if they are "allowed" to come to Mass - probably because they have read in some liberal paper somewhere that the Church has "excluded" them.

Brandon Vogt, on his excellent blog has a striking parish bulletin announcement which I rather like (though I would not want it to be accompanied by the dreadful "All Are Welcome" hymn):
“We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, yo no habla Ingles. We extend a special welcome to those who are crying new-borns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.
We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli or like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket. You’re welcom…

Recently, I have been slowly and meditatively reading the treatise of St Alphonsus on the Dignity and Duties of the Priest. It is hard-hitting stuff and I have had many occasions to examine my conscience, bow my head and repent. I recommend the text to any priest who is willing to hear from a kind of Regimental Sergeant Major of the priestly order who does not waste time telling us what wonderful people we all are, but hits us hard with the ecclesiastical equivalent of a roaring NCO pouring scorn on our excuses and laxity and getting us fit for the battlefield we have to face if we are not to be deserters from the corps to which Christ has called us.

There is a great deal in the treatise for any priest to ponder in the wee small hours. I was struck by the surprising relevance of his remarks on preaching. In his characteristically no-nonsense style, St Alphonsus warns:
If all preachers and confessors fulfilled the obligations of their office the whole world would be sanctified. Bad pr…

Home education: sometimes our classroom looks like this!
Amanda Lewin has started a new blog called Catholic Home Education UK. The focus of the site is to assist parents who are homeschooling in the UK to choose the best options for public exams, whether GCSE. IGCSE or other possibilities.

There is a lot of practical and down to earth advice even in the few posts since the blog has started. I would encourage home educators not only to follow the blog but to keep in touch with Amanda so that the Catholic homeschooling community can share expertise.

In little Britain we are now beginning to taste something of what US Catholics have been rejoicing in for years: the appointment of Bishops who are enthusiastically welcomed by Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday, still go to confession, support Humanae Vitae and drive miles to find reverent Liturgy.

In the States today, there is no little rejoicing over the appointment of Bishop Salvatore Cordileone to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Aged 56 (and therefore, Deo volente, in for 19 years of ministry to the Archdiocese, Bishop Cordileone has on his shoulders the responsibility for preaching the Catholic faith to one of the most difficult diocese in the States, particularly on the question of same sex attraction and same sex marriage.

Archbishop Cordileone worked with Archbishop Burke at the Apostolic Segnatura and is likely to be a key figure in the now well advanced project of backbone insertion in the USCCB.
In a good article with background to the appointment, Rocco Palmo writ…

My former student and good friend at the Birmingham Oratory, Richard Duncan, was ordained to the Diaconate last evening by Bishop Pargeter. God willing, he will be ordained to the priesthood next year. Congratulations to him and to the Birmingham Oratory.

Bishop Sample of the Diocese of Marquette was in Italy last week to ordain deacons and subdeacons for the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest at the Church of San Michele e Gaetano in Florence. Congratulations to all the newly-ordained and God bless Bishop Sample for travelling all the way from Michigan to carry out this office.

Neville Kyrke-Smith, UK Director of Aid to the Church in Need sent round an urgent message by email the other day concerning the situation of Christians in Syria. Tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing across the border to Lebanon.

In addition to the above video, ACN have put out a news story (SYRIA: Christians fear being attacked as fighting intensifies) while they are preparing a special Middle East report with more details. ACN has already provided Caritas Syria and the Christians in and around the city of Homs with more than £100,000 of aid in recent weeks. Here is the link to help their emergency appeal and here is a prayer from the ACN website:
PRAYER FOR CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
God, Our Father, have mercy on the Middle East. Your faithful servants – young and old alike – are called to witness to Christ. May they be strengthened during this time of turmoil as they seek to follow your beloved Son, who Himself walked their ancient homelands. In union with Benedict, o…

Along with everyone else, I am rather miffed by the impact on London especially (though I hear that there are draconian restrictions on some people elsewhere) and Boris's voice shouting at us over the loudspeakers on the tube ordering us to "geddahed of the gaaaames" does not really help.

This sort of thing motivates me to look up things on the internet such confirmation of the story that the Olympic torch was invented by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics (it's true); and to giggle at the front cover of this week's P…

When I started blogging in 2006, one of the first blogs that I followed was Jeff Miller's The Curt Jester. He was already a veteran blogger of 4 years standing. Jeff has recently reflected on his ten years of blogging.

In those days I used to follow blogs by having a folder of bookmarks and opening up the blogs in separate tabs - about half a dozen of them. It was some time later that feed readers really came into their own and I now subscribe to over 250 blogs via google reader. The Curt Jester has been there all along the way.

A good example of Jeff's style is reposted at the end of his reflection. For those who don't recognise the reference, it is a blogger's version of the Litany of Humility of Cardinal Merry del Val (itself a good text for anyone tempted to ecclesiastical careerism.)The Litany of Blog Humility
From the desire of my blog being readDeliver me dear Jesus
From the desire of my blog being praisedDeliver me dear Jesus
From the fear of my blog being des…

The big Catholic news for Scotland yesterday was, of course, the appointment of Bishop (now Archbishop) Tartaglia to Glasgow. I have posted a few times in the past on Archbishop Tartaglia's stout defence of marriage, the family, and the sanctity of human life. He's already getting flak for that in the secular press. May the Lord give him strength in his new responsibility.

The intrepid cyclists made it to Land's End. I was wondering where some of my parishioners were yesterday - they had gone down to join the last stages of a massive cycle ride from one end of Britain to the other. Ann-Marie probably holds the record, having done a warm-up from Berwick on Tweed to John O'Groats before cycling the whole distance.

You can see more pictures on the dedicated blog To Land’s End. I expect there will be post-mortem posts in due course, together with various awards.

At the time of writing, they are just short of £5000 - to contribute, go to their Charity Giving page. (Charities are Mary's Meals, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and African Mission.)

Mgr Andrew Wadsworth, Executive Director of ICEL delivered the keynote address to the Church Music Association of America on 27 June at Salt Lake City. Vultus Christi has posted the full text in a blogpost. If you prefer a Scribd edition (which you can download as a pdf), thanks to NLM for this upload.

Mgr Wadsworth's address is a helpful, concise and balanced summary of the key issues that face us in the celebration of the post-Conciliar liturgy in its ordinary form. He has caused something of a storm because he illustrates some of the problems by referring to the closing Mass of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. The Mass was not a halloween/clown/beer-festival Mass of the sort occasionally featured on those dreadful blogs that show liturgical abuses (mea culpa.) Many priests and laity would see footage of it and wonder what all the fuss is about.

And that is the point. Mgr Wadsworth's criticism is precisely that the reforms promoted by Pope Benedict have been so comprehen…

"The Pulpit" has been a great source of news, usually posting two lists of links each day and often providing one or two extras as well.

Earlier this week, Tito Edwards announced an upgrade to the site which involves moving to a new domain. The new URL is bigpulpit.com. The old one "thepulp.it" will be taken down at the end of the month so I have just changed the feed subscription to make the new link show up on the blogroll.

(The big pulpit above is in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Lublin, where I celebrated High Mass in May.)

I have an idea for next year’s Day for Life: “ALLOTMENTS.” That’s it: people who keep allotments and grow their own vegetables do all sorts of things for life, they keep the planet cool, probably eat their five a day and encourage others to do so and be healthy. There would be plenty of scriptural quotations to encourage people to grow their allotments for the glory of God. “Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred.” (Prov 15.17)or “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.” (Dan 1.12)Another one might be “PUBLIC TRANSPORT.” Take the bus for the glory of God, save the planet, be healthy, have a new lifestyle.“You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.” (Ps 65.11)“By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” (Ex 13.21)Or agai…

Thanks be to God, the Channel 4 "Living and Growing" sex education programme has been withdrawn from sale, as the Daily Mail reports. Unfortunately the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb has left the door open for the programme to be slightly sanitised rather than axed completely. Apparently he has asked for the more explicit scenes to be cut - presumably the same programme with the same corrupting ethos will then be allowed into schools again.

It is interesting that it was parents who prompted this long-overdue action. At one London school, a third of parents planned to withdraw their children from the sex-ed classes and handed out leaflets at the school gates while wearing T-shirts reading Too Much Too Young. Note that these are parents at a non-Catholic school.

I was shocked to hear the other day of yet another Catholic school that was planning to use this dreadful programme which has been repeatedly exposed in the secular press. See for example:

In the last allocution for the Sodality of the Five Holy Wounds, I talked about some modern approaches to eschatology (the last things.) Sometimes these writers have played down the importance of individual eschatology. I suggested that communal eschatology – the general judgement and the general resurrection – are closely intertwined with our individual eschatology and that I would therefore address the topic of our own four last things without feeling guilty about doing so. On Ash Wednesday, the priest says “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” At the beginning of Lent, we are reminded of our mortality. We also remind ourselves of it every day when we say the Hail Mary and ask Our Blessed Lady to pray for us both now and at the hour of our death. The idea of meditating on our own death should not therefore be something surprising to us but nowadays, even the idea of a priest giving an allocution on the subject of death might be thought odd.

Fr Ray Blake has a post offering food for thought in comparing pictures of the new Shard in London to the Tower of Babel. I was actually there just yesterday (the Shard, not the Tower of Babel) since the Jubilee line was suspended for a bit. I popped out of London Bridge Station for a breath of fresh air and realised that the exit I used was just along from the new building.

A local cabbie who happened also to be a historian of twentieth century neo-modernism told me that there was a wonky theologian roped to the top of that building. He is called "Tied Hard to Shard End."

Cardinal Burke's comments reinforce a point made by Cardinal Cañizares, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship back in March when he said that daily "private" concelebrations are not part of the Roman tradition.

Both Cardinals seem to be referring to the practice in many houses of study where priests routinely concelebrate, perhaps with a rota for principal celebrant so that your turn comes up every couple of weeks or so. Newly ordained priests in a house which has this custom might well be helped by the comments of the Cardinals if individual celebration is frowned upon.

Another question is that of assisting in choro (i.e. being on the sanctuary in a cassock and cotta but not concel…

Last week, I asked for your prayers for Fr Ben Grist who is suffering from a serious cancer and was ordained for the diocese of East Anglia. A correspondent sent me a photo from St Edmund's, Bungay where Father blessed her five children. The boys served Father's Mass. Father is truly going up to the altar of God in more ways than one. Please keep him in your prayers and give God thanks for the witness of his priesthood.

Bishop-elect Philip Egan made the following statement today on his appointment as Bishop of Portsmouth:
"It is with trepidation and yet with profound trust in the loving mercy of the Sacred Heart of Christ, that I accept the Holy Father’s appointment as the new Bishop of Portsmouth, in succession to dear Bishop Crispian.

I look forward with joy to working with my fellow priests and with all who minister in parishes, schools and other contexts, caring for the people of God. May we all together be in the closest communion of heart and mind with our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, and faithful to his call to New Evangelisation.

The ministry of the Bishop, as the chief shepherd, priest and teacher of the flock entrusted to him, involves carrying the Lord’s Cross in a particular way. So as I begin this ministry and look to the years ahead, I sincerely ask you for your prayers, together with those of our brothers and sisters in the other Christian communities and indeed of every person of…

Melinda Gates has decided to devote her life to propaganda for contraception. Described as a practising Catholic, she tells the Guardian that while there are amazing things about the Catholic religion, she wants to keep women alive and not let babies die. Contraception will apparently achieve those goals. She has wrestled with this and is now going to make $560 million available over the next eight years to promote artificial birth control.

The Grauniad article originally said that there were 200 billion women who wanted to have contraceptives but has now put that down to 200 million. (The combox has the usual slew of hate-filled anti-Catholic comment.)

Would that the Gates millions could be spent on genuine development projects rather than attempting to make women in developing countries victims of the anti-life philosophy that has been such a disastrous failure in the West.

Mgr Philip Egan has been appointed as Bishop of Portsmouth - announced at Roman noon today in the Bollettino. Mgr Egan and I were in the same year at the English College back in the day. He is a thoroughly sound chap and I am delighted that he has been given this responsibility by the Holy Father.

Mgr Egan taught theology at Oscott for many years, has had wide pastoral experience, and more recently has been Vicar-General to Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury. I am sure that the clergy of Portsmouth will find him a friendly and approachable Bishop. May God bless and protect him in the new task he has been given by Our Lord.

The promise made by the Guides in Australia used to be:I promise that I will do my best: to do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and my country; to help other people; and to keep the Guide Law.It has now been changed to:“I promise that I will do my best; to be true to myself and develop my beliefs; to serve my community and Australia, and live by the Guide Law.”
Brenda Allen, director of Girl Guides Australia said that with the deletion of God and the Queen, the Guides hope “to be seen as more inclusive and a modern, relevant organization and that many more women will like to join us”

There is a spin on the change which implies that younger members will welcome this change while older members will find it controversial. Catholic observers familiar with the controversies over traditional liturgy will be instinctively skeptical about that. It is normally the elderly trendies in an organisation that think that relevance and "inclusivity" are going to attract the young. The you…

Photo credit: pchidell on flickr
The heart of St John Vianney has been venerated at various venues in the North of England since last Thursday. One of the families from my parish set off early in the morning on Thursday for the four and a half hour drive to Manchester to venerate the relic at Wythenshawe. Despite returning very late, they were back for our monthly Mass and homeschoolers gathering on Friday, all in good form. defende nos in proelio has a report of the trip and here is a photo from the official Catholic Church in England and Wales flickr set:

Some of the young people from my parish are cycling from John O’Groats to Lands End to raise funds for Mary’s Meals, St Pio’s Friary, Bradford and the African Missions. The above picture shows Anna Marie who decided on a warm-up from Berwick-Upon-Tweed to John O'Groats. Her father Adrian has gamely accompanied her; as he is only a year younger than me, I have the highest respect for this endeavour.

You can read about the various stages on the dedicated blog To Land’s End. Others will be joining throughout the route.

Roads through the mountains take the easiest route but it is still a long uphill climb on a bicycle. Here is a picture from a stretch in the Cairngorms:

There was a problem with a wheel, necessitating a careful freewheel down hill and a visit to a highland bicycle shop:

Nick Clegg has shifted the goalposts on same sex "marriage" - Just like that!

In an interview for yesterday's Evening Standard (We should allow gay weddings in church) the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has said that Churches that wish to conduct same sex "marriages" should be able to do so.

Until now, Churches have received "reassurances" that same sex "marriage" legislation would only apply to civil ceremonies, not to those held in Church. The value of those reassurances is well summarised in the Telegraph article (Nick Clegg backs gay marriage in churches – in break with David Cameron pledge) speaking of Nick Clegg's new move on the subject:It follows a series of hints from leading Coalition figures that reassurances given to religious groups could be revisited once the plans are on the statute book.In other words, "We lied."

At the moment, Clegg says that Churches would not be forced to conduct same sex "marriage…

I wish you all a very happy Fourth of July over there in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I thought I was a bit late but then realised that it is still early evening for you. I hope you had an enjoyable day.

For the video this year, here is Kate Smith IN 1938 introducing the new composition "God Bless America."

This coming Sunday is Sea Sunday when there will be a collection in parishes for the Apostleship of the Sea. They have greatly improved their publicity in recent years, without it being overwhelming and counter-productive. Today they sent me this story in advance of the Sunday appeal. It gives just one example of the kind of work they do:Port chaplain comes to aid of injured seafarer

A port chaplain came to the aid of a Filipino seafarer after he was injured on board a ship in Ipswich.

The seafarer fell from a ladder in the hold of a ship after being put to work on it immediately following his arrival from Manila.

He was rushed to hospital and Sister Marian Davey, Apostleship of the Sea port chaplain in East Anglia, was called to visit him.

“The combination of jet lag and limited food on the plane meant he was weak for the demanding work onboard. Whilst working in the hold of the ship, he fell from the bottom of a ladder and injured himself.

The big news today is that Bishop Gerhard Müller has been appointed as the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to succeed Cardinal Levada. This appointment has occasioned a certain amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth, from both traditionalists and liberals.

Some time ago, Rorate Caeli summarised the concerns of traditionalists: In charge of the henhouse? This summarises some problematic statements. I would find it difficult to support what he said on the Eucharist (though I do not have access to the context of what was part of a lengthy dogmatic treatise) but there has been perhaps too much panic about what he said on the Virginity of Our Lady.

As long ago as 1952, the theologian Albert Mitterer, discussed the question of the doctrine of Our Lady's virginity in partu (Dogma und Biologie der heiligen Familie. Vienna, 1952.) His discussion is reported by Ludwig Ott in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (page 205). Ott comes down on the side of phys…

A correspondent has passed on news of Ben Grist, a seminarian of the Diocese of East Anglia who has been studying at Oscott. Ben was diagnosed with a serious cancer and asked to be ordained to the priesthood. The Rector of Oscott and the Diocesan Administrator supported his petition and Fr Ben Grist was ordained at Oscott on Saturday by Archbishop Longley.

Congratulations to Father on his ordination. His priestly office, even in such difficult circumstances, will be of incalculable value. Please join the many people who are praying for Father and his family. (My correspondent told me of a small group who are praying particularly to Teresa Higginson.)

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It was not until my first year at University that I became aware that some converts were unhappy about making a qualitative distinction between converts and cradle Catholics. I was told that the comparison was usually to the disadvantage of the converts.

Until then, I had just admired converts because they had found their way to the faith and taken the trouble to go through whatever steps were deemed necessary in their local parish before being received into the Church. My youthful reading included John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton and Ronald Knox, all of whom I enjoyed immensely; they helped me to have a certain reverence for the category of people “converts” and it simply would not have occurred to me to think of someone as a second class citizen in the Church as a result of their having made a conscious adult decision to join it.

Later, I came to understand how much of a price some converts had paid in their family and social lives for becoming Catholic. As a priest, I have had the…

On the feast of St Ignatius, I offer my prayers and good wishes to some great Jesuits. Just off the top of my head, I think of Fr Joseph Fessio SJ the founder of Ignatius Press which has not only published the English translations of various works of Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict, but has also given a break for good Catholic authors both of theology and of Catholic fiction. Then there is Fr Bob Spitzer SJ, with whom I studied in Rome many years ago, and Fr Paul Mankowski SJ who has written some superb articles over the years. Here in England, I recall Fr Anthony Meredith SJ, the great fatherly commentator on the Fathers of Cappadocia and in Rome, there is Fr Gilles Pelland SJ, the fierce French-Canadian patristics scholar was a bit harsh when I first arrived in the Holy City, but seemed to soften a bit when after 5 years he seeme satisfied that, though English, I was not a modernist.

Many of my Jesuit priest friends and mentors have now reached “that night when no man can work” an…

Like the French with Gallicanism, the Americans have been unfortunate enough to have a heresy named after them. Americanism was the name given to a loose collection of erroneous opinions related to minimising authority, in teaching, spiritual direction and religious life, and in cultivating a too radical separation of Church and State. In his encyclical letter Longinqua Oceani of 1895, Pope Leo XIII condemned the view “that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced.” (n.6) and went on to say that “[the Church] would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.”

Some time ago, at an academic conference on Liturgy that featured contributions from people of various different faiths, I was interested to chat to a Reformed (or Liberal) Rabbi who was frank about some similarities between the controversy within Judaism over liturgy and some of the things he had heard about the reaction to traditional Catholic liturgy. He also lamented wistfully that it was his younger worshippers who wanted him to offer the prayers in Hebrew and face the same way as them when praying.

More recently, I found this guide on Judaism 101: Jewish Liturgy setting out the differences in worship that a visitor might find between the various movements within JudaismIn Orthodox synagogues, women and men are seated separately; in Reform and Conservative, all sit together. See The Role of Women in the Synagogue.In Orthodox and usually Conservative, everything is in Hebrew. In Reform, most is done in English, though they are increasingly using Hebrew.In Orthodox, the person lea…

I go to Confession twice a year, at Easter and Christmas because I feel I should. My I find it difficult to know what to say as I no longer seem to be assailed by the temptations of earlier years. One priest told me rather irritably not to come to Confession if I had nothing to say.
I am sorry to hear that a priest was irritated with you. Say a prayer for him asking the Lord to give him the virtue of patience. I don’t agree with his advice. In your letter, you spoke of another priest who encouraged you to go to confession more frequently. He is on the right lines, I think. People who go to confession frequently usually remember more to confess. This is not because they are greater sinners but because their conscience becomes more sensitive to venial sins. This is not some kind of morbid “guilt” but a desire for holiness in small things. When you say that you do not have the temptations you used to have, perhaps you are thinking that the sacrament is only for mortal sins.